Although I left Perth a long time ago, I’ve always believed that there’s something magical about the West Coast – an idea I explored as part of Pieces of Perth, a guidebook I wrote and edited for Urban Walkabout. Fairfax also said some nice things about the project.
Image credit: The Modern Institute
A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Milanese industrial designer Martino Gamper for Vault, a new magazine with a fresh take on contemporary art. Gamper’s 100 Chairs, 100 Days project – which saw him spin chairs out of found objects – is inspiration for anyone who wants to fall back in love with their creative process. The latest issue, which also includes dreamy photo essays by Warwick Baker and Conor O’Brien and a feature on Helmut Newton and his muse Henriette, is on newsstands now.
Amazing Babes, a picture book featuring technicolour illustrations of extraordinary women, is the kind of gift I wish I’d received as a kid. I profiled the author Eliza Sarlos for Broadsheet earlier this month.
Last year, Paul McCartney absolved Yoko Ono of her role in breaking up The Beatles and last week, the Japanese-American artist and iconoclast, told the the Times just how thankful she was.
“I’m starting to understand something interesting,” she said. “If all those people hadn’t bashed me, what would I be doing now? What I am now was made by all those terrible incidents. I thought it was terrible all those years, but when I think about it now, I realise it was a blessing.”
While working on a feature about a retrospective of Ono’s work, due to open at the MCA next month, it struck me that this bashing has less to do with her status as an exotic temptress who dared to split up the greatest band alive – or a public contempt for performance art – and everything to do with the fact that messing with the Beatles is by extension, messing with the bedrock of white masculinity. I’m willing to bet that if Ono’s (sometimes unpalatable) sonic experiments emanated from someone like Thurston Moore, they would be hailed as avant-garde genius, rather than the warblings of an artist that history is not quite ready to hear.
Last weekend, I swapped Newtown for Newcastle thanks to the National Young Writer’s Festival, held as part of This is Not Art (TiNA). These were my high points.
Feminism versus beer
This NYF, I was lucky enough to be part of Cherchez La Femme, a live talkshow that couples feminist banter with icy beer. Topics covered: Molly Lambert, reality television and the secret life of Kanye West. You can download the podcast here!
Paper trail
Hand-stitched, illustrated, glossy, matte…I’ve always been obsessed with magazines. It was so inspiring to meet a bunch of publishers, editors and makers proving that there’s still magic in the printed word.
Failing better
If you’re a writer, all the personal brand mantras in the world can’t touch the terror that comes with failing. The Fail Better panel offered a heartening look at how other writers deal with this.
Stage fright
This year, I was also part of a live debate that pitted cultural criticism and opinion writing against news journalism, along with some very talented panelists. A high school redux that also (partly) chased away my public speaking fears.
Small city serendipity
In Newcastle, scale seems to breed serendipitous moments. Here, following a stretch of sand and sea always leads you back where you need to be and navigating a street of shuttered restaurants ends in a post-panel dinner on a starlit balcony. Both reasons why I’m coming back.